Rome, Italy (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI is monitoring the case of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning and has not ruled out getting involved through diplomatic channels, the Vatican said Sunday.
As he has in the past in humanitarian cases, the pope would intervene if asked by authorities in another country and would do so through proper diplomatic channels, not publicly, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement.
"The Holy See is following the case with attention and participation," Lombardi said. "The position of the church, which is opposed to the death penalty, is that stoning is a particularly brutal form."
According to Italy's official news agency ANSA, the Italian government is leading the case for clemency for the woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning after she was convicted of adultery. Iranian judicial authorities say a final verdict in her case has not yet been made, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported recently. In July, Iran's judiciary said the case was under review.
A large photo of Ashtiani has been hung outside Italy's Equal Opportunities Ministry to draw attention to her plight, ANSA reported.
"'This unprecedented act aims to mobilize opinion and contribute to saving Sakineh from a brutal, unacceptable sentence,'' Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna said in a joint statement, according to ANSA.
Italy's Foreign Ministry told ANSA that it is pursuing clemency for Ashtiani through diplomatic channels.
''The case is being followed closely by the foreign ministry and personally by Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who has given instructions for close bilateral relations to be maintained with the Iranian authorities so that they consider clemency in this specific case,'' a recent ministry statement said.
Italy is one of Iran's most important trade partners in the European Union, with bilateral trade exceeding $8 billion in 2009, according to a report on the website of the Iranian-Italian Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile, Ashtiani also faces a sentence of 99 lashes because of a photograph in a newspaper, but opponents of the execution say it is a case of mistaken identity.
Iranian authorities imposed the sentence after they saw the photo of a woman without a head scarf in the newspaper, said the International Committee Against Stoning, a human rights group.
In an apology, The Times of London, which ran the photo on its front page August 28, said the woman was wrongly identified as Ashtiani.
The Times said the photo actually is of Susan Hejrat, a political activist living in Sweden.
Iranian law requies all women, regardless of their faith, to wear garments that cover their hair and bodies.
According to the Times, one of Ashtiani's former lawyers, Mohammed Mostafaei, gave the paper the photo.
Mostafaei told CNN on Saturday that he still thinks the photo may be of his former client.
The Times reported that Mostafaei said Ashtiani's 22-year-old son had e-mailed the lawyer two photographs three months ago and told him both were of his mother.
"One was the widely used picture of Ms. Ashtiani with her face obscured by a chador [cloak], and the other was the one used by The Times ... That showed the full face of a woman," The Times said in a statement Friday.
Ashtiani's son, Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, wrote in an open letter that another lawyer sent the newspaper an authentic photo of his mother, but that it did not appear in the Times article. The letter was circulated by the International Committee Against Stoning on Friday.
"We do not know how that picture was originally obtained, nor to whom the picture belongs," Ghaderzadeh said in the letter.
"My mother has been called in to see the judge in charge of prison misdemeanors and he has sentenced our helpless mother to 99 lashes on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her [Sakineh] without hijab," he wrote.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran did not answer a CNN telephone call early Sunday morning.
The Committee Against Stoning said Friday "it is Mr. Mostafaei's responsibility to provide an explanation as to why he has disseminated [a] counterfeit photo and information regarding Sakineh's case; his action has only led to increased pressure on Sakineh and her family."
"We strongly condemn this barbaric new sentence of 99 lashes imposed by the Islamic Republic against Sakineh and we demand that this sentence be abandoned immediately," the committee said.
Mostafaei told CNN that Ghaderzadeh three months ago gave him two photos -- one of Ashtiani wearing a hijab (covering) and one without it.
The lawyer said he immediately released the photo of Ashtiani wearing the chador and sent the Times the photo of her without the hijab more recently.
Asked about whether the photo printed by the Times is of Ashtiani, Mostafaei said, "In my opinion it is Ms. Ashtiani. It was given to me by her own son. If it is not indeed her, it looked just like her. She was wearing religious clothes in the photo. She had the same face, same everything."
Ashtiani, who is being held in Tabriz, Iran, no longer has visitation rights, the family told CNN.

VATICAN CITY  The Vatican raised the possibility Sunday of using behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to save the life of an Iranian widow sentenced to be stoned for adultery.
In its first public statement on the case, which has attracted worldwide attention, the Vatican decried stoning as a particularly brutal form of capital punishment.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Catholic church opposes the death penalty in general.

It is unclear what chances any Vatican bid would have to persuade the Muslim nation to spare the woman's life. Brazil, which has friendly relations with Iran, was rebuffed when it offered her asylum.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of adultery. In July, Iranian authorities said they would not carry out the stoning sentence for the time being, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging for adultery and other offenses.
Her son, Sajad, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos that he was appealing to Pope Benedict XVI and to Italy to work to stop the execution.

Lombardi told The Associated Press that no formal appeal had reached the Vatican. But he hinted that Vatican diplomacy might be employed to try to save Ashtiani.
Lombardi said in a statement that the Holy See "is following the case with attention and interest."

"When the Holy See is asked, in an appropriate way, to intervene in humanitarian issues with the authorities of other countries, as it has happened many times in the past, it does so not in a public way, but through its own diplomatic channels," Lombardi said in the statement.

In one of the late Pope John Paul II's encyclicals in 1995, the pontiff laid out the Catholic Church's stance against capital punishment.
John Paul went to bat in several high-profile cases of death-row inmates in the United States. One of the first was the case of Paula Cooper, who was convicted of murdering her elderly Bible teacher when she was 15 but spared the electric chair by Indiana in 1989.

But that same year, a papal appeal for clemency to Cuba to spare a war hero and three other Cuban officers convicted of drug trafficking from the firing squad went unheeded.
Meanwhile, Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, told the ANSA news agency that while Italy respects Iranian sovereignty and isn't in any way interfering, "a gesture of clemency from Iran is the only thing that can save her."
Italy has strong economic ties, primarily energy interests, in Iran.